Guest speaker: Keri Taub
Keri Taub is the Vice President of Strategy at Bloomingdale’s. Her expertise is in marketing and customer insights, and she holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a BA in Economics and Consumer Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. Keri has been with Bloomingdale’s for eight years, working in customer insights and the company’s loyalty program. More recently, she’s been applying that knowledge to a full view of the business as VP of Strategy.
Episode summary
This episode features an interview with Keri Taub, Vice President of Strategy at Bloomingdale’s, one of the most well-known and established houses of brands in the fashion world. Keri is an accomplished business executive with extensive experience and knowledge of consumer insights.
Can a brand act like a best friend? The team at Bloomingdale’s says yes, and they know how to do it. In this episode, Keri shares her insights on how Bloomingdale’s is approaching data-driven marketing in a changing retail world, how to leverage good data for memorable personalization, and when to go an extra step further with the highest-stakes clients.
Key takeaways
In the retail world, brick and mortar stores are still vital, but they need to be very purposeful, and data can drive strategy for physical locations
Marketing includes the whole customer journey, from upper funnel down to the unboxing and in-store experience
Unique data and personal touches can go a long way in maintaining customer advocates
Automated data can be incredibly powerful in creating personalized, memorable experiences, but with the highest-loyalty customers, it’s often necessary to go above and beyond
Speaker quotes
"If you’re working from home, you’re at the office, if you commute, you don’t commute, if we catch you at that second, it really makes it so much more effective. And that’s a perfect example of leveraging data very reliably. Because you can’t fool us, right? We know the time you open the email, and so that one feels like a win-win. It’s not invasive information we’re collecting about you, and we’re just sending you something at the time that is most convenient for you"
Episode timestamps
*(01:49) - Keri’s role at Bloomingdale’s and her background
*(05:28) - Personalizing the shopping and unboxing experience with data
*(08:41) - How data influences Bloomingdale’s physical store strategy
*(12:09) - Having fluid internal communication and collaboration across teams
*(16:24) - The group of customers where automated data sometimes needs to be scrutinized
*(22:33) - Ideas about the future of retail marketing
*(27:56) - An example of another company doing it right with the customer journey (hint: it’s Disney)
*(30:01) - Ending advice: how to hit the right mix of personal touch and quantitative insights
